Turkish History 1939
Written: by Falih Rifki Atay;
Source: La Turquie Kemaliste, no. 29, February 1939;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor.
Those foreigners who see in Turkey the words “one party” and “democracy” appearing side-by-side probably shake their heads doubtfully and imagine that what we have here is nothing but a demagogic means of justifying a dictatorial regime in the eyes of the public.
In the aftermath of the victory at Smyrna in the winter of 1922 Atatürk discussed with several Turkish intellectuals the name to be given the party he was going to found. These intellectuals, most of whom were doctors of law, sought a name which, as occurs in western democracies, had a political, social, and even economic meaning. But there existed no class in ancient Turkey, which was nothing but a semi-colony subject to the regime of capitulations and where Turks only fulfilled the roles of functionaries and farmers. Commerce was in the hands of foreign minorities, and as for industry, it was non-existent. The few factories that functioned belonged to the state and worked for national defense. Foreigners owned the rest.
Under the Ottoman Empire two classes could be distinguished, one of which consisted of the monarchical institutions and the supporters of the theocratic and Asiatic regime which for a century had worked to prevent the national culture from adapting itself to western civilization; the other of the group of partisans of renewal who had also worked for a century for the development of the Turkish nation within the framework of nationalism and Occidentalism. It would have been natural that two parties exist in Turkey, one conservative and the other progressive, had there not been a struggle carried out by the class that prevented our country from liberating itself from the stranglehold of the institutions of the past, which defended from interest or ignorance and fanaticism the state of decadence that had lasted since the siege of Vienna, and on the other hand the class of intellectuals that fought for liberation.
But in the realm of civilization these same intellectuals engaged in another struggle, one that was expressed as that between two civilizations. As for the people, they only demanded well-being, peace, and progress. The fanatics of the ancien régime, like the clergy of the Middle Ages, by threatening divine wrath had succeeded in habituating the people to resigning themselves to poverty and slavery.
Atatürk gave his party the name of the People. “Is there a single party,” he said, “that divides the Turkish people from the political, social, or economic point of view? No. We can thus only represent the people.”
At first the past was liquidated with all its institutions: the Caliphate, the monarchy, the religious laws, schools, and tribunals, etc. The reactionary elements were prevented from opposing this liquidation. To have abandoned ourselves during this period to a theoretical democratic mysticism would have meant once again turning over Turkey to religious terror. But at party meetings the men who defended these same ideas causes were able, without distinction, to criticize at will the acts of the government. Despite all, Atatürk never wanted us to remain without a National Assembly, and neither he, his ministers, nor the deputies ever failed to be in frequent contact with the people, to discuss issues with them, to listen to them. And in giving them the possibility of sending independent deputies to the Grand National Assembly they offered those parties not within the the revolutionary party the occasion to freely express themselves at the tribune of the Assembly.
The successes and the accomplishments of the new regime and, what is more, the extinction of the “Asiatic” and clerical class, an extinction owed to the fact that the old, abolished institutions no longer exist, allowed for the progressive extension of national control in the new Turkey. The press was granted full freedom. In Turkey the newspapers are completely free, with the sole condition that they respect certain legal clauses aimed at the defense of the regime; they can make use of all their rights to criticism and discussion. They are only responsible to the tribunals.
At the recent legislative elections the new national leader, İsmet İnönü, for the first time proclaimed the candidacy of deputies from his party after having first proceeded to a consultation by means of a secret ballot by the voters of twenty-eight electoral circumscriptions. A certain number of sitting deputies lost their seats after failing to obtain votes during this secret consultation. At the upcoming elections the head of state, who is general chairman of the party, will present lists to each electoral circumscription containing the majority of candidates. These lists will contain five vacant seats and a list of names several times greater than these five seats. The result will be that the deputies represent the people even more directly and the candidates will be chosen from among the elite men who have demonstrated activism in the affairs of the country and the party.
As for the control of the Grand National Assembly, it is the object of no restrictions. The current phase of Kemalist democracy in Turkey is the following: the sovereignty and control of the Grand National Assembly are total and absolute. In addition, the system of election of this Assembly is the one that is best adapted to the needs of the country and which in present conditions realizes the maximum representation of the people. The organization by the state of industrial and economic affairs, the control by the state of labor and services and the regulation by this same state of economic life, constitute a natural barrier to the dividing of the people, one and united at the base for the raising of the country towards a state of perfect development.